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Over the spanning nearly four hundred years, the transatlantic slave trade saw 12.5 million Africans trafficked from their continent to the Americas. A staggering 1.8 million of those individuals died during the voyage, subjected to unfathomable conditions of overcrowding, squalor, and disease. Many took their own lives by leaping overboard, while others were forcibly cast into the sea.

A Tale of Two Stories

In The Zorg, author Siddharth Kara weaves together two parallel narratives. The first chronicles a harrowing incident aboard the eponymous slave ship—the deliberate murder of 132 captive individuals by its British crew. The second story explores how this atrocity played a pivotal role in the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, thanks largely by the dedicated work of a coalition of abolitionist activists. Among them was Olaudah Equiano, who authored one of the rare first-person narratives of the Middle Passage, calling it “a scene of horror almost inconceivable”.

Liverpool's Central Role

The tale begins in Liverpool, a port city that at the peak of its economic power was accountable for 40% of Europe's slave trade. Financing slavery was a lucrative venture for everyone from the elites but also the working classes. One such entrepreneur, William Gregson, accumulated his earnings from rope-making, ploughed them into the slave trade, and eventually became a wealthy burgher and later mayor. Gregson financed the slave ship The William, which departed from Liverpool for West Africa in October 1780 under Captain Richard Hanley. Its hold was filled with trade goods like tobacco, firearms, knives, and various “India goods” such as chintz and cowrie shells—the shells being a common currency in the purchase of human beings.

A Ship Seized

Concurrently, a Dutch slave vessel named the Zorg (later anglicized by the British as the Zong) had departed the Netherlands. With Britain declaring war on the Dutch in late 1780, the Royal Navy gave British ships permission to capture Dutch property at sea—a de facto license for piracy. The Zorg was subsequently taken by a British captain and anchored off the Gold Coast. Meanwhile, Captain Hanley, on a slaving expedition, took aboard a fleeing British governor named Robert Stubbs, who had been removed for corruption.

The Nightmare Passage

When Hanley reached Cape Coast Castle—a stronghold with a vast slave dungeon beneath it—he took command of the captured Zorg. He proceeded to severely overcrowd it with captives, put a dozen of his own crew on board, and made Luke Collingwood, a ship's surgeon of dubious nautical skill, its captain. In August 1781, the Zorg finally left Accra carrying 442 enslaved Africans, 17 crew members, and one depraved passenger: the former governor, Robert Stubbs.

Kara is particularly skilled at using contemporaneous sources to bring to life the general hell of being transported on a slave ship.

The Zorg's journey was plagued with disaster. "The flux" swept through the vessel, and then scurvy. The captain fell ill, became delirious, and handed command over to Stubbs. Thus, “a ship full of decay and death was being commanded by a passenger.” Kara masterfully utilizes eyewitness accounts to paint a picture of the sheer horror. The graphic testimony of Alexander Falconbridge, a doctor who became an activist, describes how the captives' skin was frequently rubbed raw to the bone from being packed on bare wood, their flesh caught between the planks.

A Calculated Atrocity

By late November 1781, the Zorg was still far from Jamaica and dangerously short on water. The crew made the decision to throw overboard a number of the enslaved Africans, who had already suffered through months of appalling conditions below deck. This unspeakable act was not motivated by preserving life—the Africans had pleaded to be allowed to live, even without water rations—but by pure economic greed. Maritime insurance policies did not cover losses from disease, but they did cover cargo discarded out of “necessity” for the ship's safety. Over a period of days, the crew murdered “those Africans who would be worth less at auction”—the infirm, the sick, including women and children, among them a baby born during the voyage.

Insurance and Injustice

Back in Liverpool, investor William Gregson was dissatisfied with the profit on his venture. He submitted an insurance claim for £30 per lost slave—a substantial sum in today's money. The insurers refused to pay. In March 1783, Gregson took them to court and was awarded a trial by jury, with his lawyers claiming that throwing the enslaved people overboard had been “necessary.”

Catalyzing the Movement

According to Kara, “there is a direct line of causality between the public exposure of the Zorg murders and the first movement to abolish slavery in England.” Merely twelve days after the trial, an published essay appeared in a prominent English newspaper. The author, who claimed to have been present the court proceedings, made a powerful case against slavery, using the Zorg case as a key illustration of its inherent evil. Olaudah Equiano saw the letter and brought it to the activist Granville Sharp, who petitioned for a new trial. At the subsequent hearing, the events on the Zorg were examined in meticulous detail, precisely what the abolitionists had wanted.

The Road to 1807

In the spring of 1787, the founding members of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade convened. Over the following years, they petitioned, orated, lobbied tirelessly, and gathered evidence on the realities of the slave trade. “Their efforts,” Kara writes, “would lay a blueprint for the pursuit of social justice.” After years of struggles, the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was enacted in 1807.

An Enduring Impact

The debate over who or what should be credited for abolition remains a matter of debate. The Zorg's influence, however, is powerfully evident in J.M.W. Turner's famous painting, The Slave Ship, which was inspired by the events of 1781. While slavery has been near-universal in human history, its abolition following a sustained public movement was unprecedented, serving as an affirmation to the power of moral courage, the pen, and unwavering persistence.

Kara's Narrative Method

Unlike his other work—such as the acclaimed Cobalt Red—Kara has had to address certain lacunae in the historical record. Consequently, speculative passages contrast with rigorously researched accounts, giving the book a somewhat chimeric feel. A blend of narrative suspense and part historical analysis, The Zorg ultimately manages to illuminating one of history's most horrific episodes, using powerful storytelling and documented fact to assemble a portrait that haunts the reader well after the final page.